ERIC ED565819: Grammar Processing through English L2 E-Books: Distance vs. Face-to-Face Learning

2016·0.36 MB·English

by  ERIC

13Grammar processing through English L2
e-books: distance vs. face-to-face learning
Mª Ángeles Escobar-Álvarez1
Abstract
For university teachers in Distance Education, e-books should be an
optimum solution since they do not have the opportunity to flip through
the pages of print texts together with their students in the same classroom.
College students usually use criteria such as cost, efficiency and personal
comfort. Working with e-textbooks can be a tough decision for them.
However, we present the advantages of an e-grammar book approach to
foreign language teaching, and put forward a learning-efficient way to work
with e-textbooks with the purpose of improving student motivation in a
distance learning context.
Keywords: distance learning, e-textbooks, English grammar, L2 acquisition, student
motivation.
1. Introduction
Many researchers assume that most adults never master a foreign grammar.
Moreover, for foreign language instruction in distance contexts where learners
can hardly be exposed to the second language in the natural environment and
where acquisition of communicative skills is not face-to-face through the foreign
language, the situation may be even more difficult.
1. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain; [email protected]
How to cite this chapter: Escobar-Álvarez, M. Á. (2016). Grammar processing through English L2 e-books: distance vs.
face-to-face learning. In A. Pareja-Lora, C. Calle-Martínez, & P. Rodríguez-Arancón (Eds), New perspectives on teaching
and working with languages in the digital era (pp. 153-160). Dublin: Research-publishing.net. http://dx.doi.org/10.14705/
rpnet.2016.tislid2014.430
© 2016 Mª Ángeles Escobar-Álvarez (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) 153
Chapter 13
The aims of this paper are first of all to expose college students’ textbook
preferences in the context of distance learning in Spain, and, on the other hand,
to take the challenge issued and show the type of e-textbooks that may be
determinant in such a distance learning environment. The procedure consists
firstly in summarising the pros and cons about print textbooks and e-books, and
how they are influencing the acquisition of the subject under study: English
grammar through learning tasks in Tourism studies. Then we will try to contrast
how the affective factor and motivation exert an important influence on students
when they are using the type of textbook that meets most of their preferences in
the subject under study.
A mixed method is used in aiming at researching the easiest learning way which
an e-textbook may offer in order to enhance the acquisition of our subject. Using
a cross-sectional survey conducted with our students, we will demonstrate that
the type of textbook is not the most important factor to guarantee the successful
acquisition of a particular subject in distance education, but motivation and
affective learning. This can serve to encourage teachers to publish their
textbooks while paying attention to their students’ preferences in either form. It
can also have important pedagogical implications on distance education, such as
increasing the offer of e-books to their students.
2. Pros and cons
of print books and e-books
Traditionally written texts represent an ancient way to preserve knowledge. In
fact, ancient books have lasted many years. So the question is whether e-books
overlook this. Therefore, important information can be lost in a matter of seconds
just because of a simple mistake of pressing the wrong button.
On the other hand, mistakes can be corrected and information can be updated
quickly. The permanence of a written book is far beyond a standard e-book, so
are their mistakes. From an affective perspective, an e-book may not give the
reader the intellectual feeling that a written book can.
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Textbooks are usually heavy and carrying multiple books may result in a strain
on your back. With e-books, one only needs to carry one device that will house
all of them. Moreover, today one can have access to cloud-based digital libraries
from any electronic device (mobile phone or tablet). These digital libraries do
not only offer knowledge to their academic clients but a digital platform which
is an open and collaborative learning space where students can personalise their
selections for study.
The textbook used in our research is English Grammar and Learning Tasks
for Tourism Studies (Escobar-Álvarez, 2011). Students have used this textbook
since early 2012, where the subject of English II for Tourism was launched
within the Degree of Tourism at UNED. We had to wait until January 2014 for
the corresponding e-book to be available for our students.
In order to conduct our research we asked our students to write an essay on the
advantages and disadvantages of using the textbook or the e-book to prepare this
subject. Most students turned out to prefer the textbook to the e-book, mainly
because they feel they can write notes on its pages more easily that in an e-book.
In what follows, we will be discussing the factors that should be considered in
order to offer students a user-friendly e-book approach which enables them to
process the L2 grammar in a natural way.
3. Student motivation
There is abundant literature on the scope of motivation in the learning of
foreign languages. Krashen’s (1982) Affective Filter theory during the 1970-80s
showed that “learners with high motivation, self-confidence, a good self-image,
and a low level of anxiety are better equipped for success in second language
acquisition [. In contrast,] low motivation, low self-esteem, and debilitating
anxiety [… may] form a mental block that prevents comprehensible input from
being used for acquisition” (Rannut, n.d., n.p.). According to Dörnyei (2001),
the teacher behaviour is a prevailing motivational tool: “[t]he teacher stimulus
is diverse in that it ranges from the empathy with student-teacher attitudes that
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conquer students to engross in undertakings” (p. 120). Ellis (1994), in an attempt
to explore motivation, merely emphasises that the motivation allows learners to
be aware of their own learning process.
In our study we assume that if our students freely write a voluntary essay showing
their textbook preferences, they will also indicate their grade of motivation. In
this way, we were not only measuring their personal taste with respect to their
personal choices to use a textbook or an e-book, but also their motivation to be
explicitly active in their own learning process. Moreover, our students were also
told that their participation would have a positive impact in their final grade. As
pointed out by Lin and Warschauer (2011),
“[t]he most influential theory in the field of language learning motivation is the
socio-educational model proposed by Gardner (1985). This model highlights
the impact of attitudes towards (L2) communities on motivation and student
achievement. […] This model also identifies two types of motivational
orientation: integrative and instrumental. Integrative orientation is defined
as ‘a sincere and personal interest in the people and culture represented by
the other language group’ […], while instrumental orientation pertains to
the potential pragmatic gains of L2 proficiency, such as to get a better job
or to pass a required examination […] Masgoret and Gardner (2003) found
that there was a positive correlation between both types of orientation and
achievement. Both integrative and instrumental orientation had an indirect
effect on achievement through motivation” (p. 59).
4. Grammar and its benefits
for autonomous learning
Grammar may be defined as the linguistic system of a language. Traditionally,
grammar was associated to rules which dictated what one should say or write to
speak a language well. However this perspective is no longer followed by more
current grammar approaches to L2 teaching. Many recent grammar accounts pay
attention to how the linguistic system of a particular language is acquired and
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Mª Ángeles Escobar-Álvarez
used. Clearly, one can learn a foreign language in a more natural way by looking
at how sounds or words are combined and how sentences are formed by native
speakers from birth.
As for L2 use, any adult learner can realise that practice is key to performance.
Since adult learners do not start from scratch because they have already acquired
their first language, they may try – to no avail – to target the foreign language
with their own L1 grammar. For some teachers, negative feedback is always
required to acquire the target-like linguistic system. Others adopt a more eclectic
method and claim that a natural grammar approach along with a task oriented
performance results in a more natural way to use the L2 successfully. To do so, an
active, autonomous attitude to language learning is clearly required. Following
Escobar-Álvarez (2011),
“it is clear that the explicit study of some constructions that form
the grammar of the target language can support the learning of such a
language in a quicker and more efficient way. In this sense, it’s important
to think of grammar as something that can help, like any tool, rather than
something that has to be memorised. When one understands the grammar
(or the particular constructions) of a language, one can immediately apply
this explicit knowledge to other related linguistic facts without having to
ask a teacher or look in a book, which is also essential, for example, in a
case of self-study” (p. 14).
User-friendly e-books allow learners to work in a natural environment and in an
autonomous way. For example, an e-grammar book can tell when a mistake is
made and which grammar point needs revising, whenever and wherever learners
are. Practice is therefore guaranteed.
5. Dealing with example generation tasks
An e-book should provide a comprehensive treatment of the examples used
in teaching and learning grammar in the foreign language. It should focus on
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learner generated examples, a teaching strategy of asking L2 learners to construct
their own examples in the L2 language under given constraints. Clearly, learner
generated examples in the L2 serve as a powerful pedagogical tool for enhancing
the learning of grammar at a variety of levels. Likewise, the resources provided
would result in a motivating introduction to the study of the L2 grammar. As
argued above, grammar points should not just be part of a comprehensive
grammatical syllabus, but intended to revise and consolidate what the student
already knows and will need to know for succeeding in a particular learning task.
Obviously, descriptive rules are often forgotten and what more importantly, they
do not really help to raise the students’ level of accuracy to perform well in the
writing and speaking part of the exam. One of the goals of the learning tasks
contained in a good grammar e-book is to develop, improve and practice the
knowledge of English grammar required for the practice of all language skills.
It is well-known that Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) or Task-Based
Instruction (TBI) attempts to make students do meaningful tasks using the
target language, cf. Long (1991), Ellis (2003), Gass and Selinker (2008), among
many others. Nowadays, interdisciplinarity and ‘task-based approach’ are the
terms appearing in the new curricula of L2 teaching across the board since
there is a general need to teach languages with a topic-content. According to
the grammatical approach outlined so far, Escobar-Álvarez ’s (2011) e-textbook
puts forward learning tasks that are related to a topic-content in the Tourism
industry. The way to develop such tasks implies:
• understanding each task, i.e. reading through the input material and
seeing what is required by it;
• selecting ideas, i.e. deciding what specific information is needed from
the input material but taking care to avoid ‘lifting’ phrases from the
texts;
• making notes, i.e. highlighting who the target reader or audience for the
writing task is and what register is most appropriate;
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Mª Ángeles Escobar-Álvarez
• planning a final answer, i.e. deciding on the outline for the task, how to
structure it, thinking about paragraphs and using some linking devices.
6. Conclusion
In considering learning from tasks in the context of foreign language grammar,
the self-study approach of an e-book, like the one we discuss here, seems to
be on the right track. First, students are active in their own learning process by
having a key to all tasks. In addition, the grammar constructions include ‘worked
examples’, that is, explicit solutions to activities provided in real professional
texts, which may be highlighted thanks to the specific techniques provided by
e-readers or electronic libraries. In either way, students generate examples which
mirror their conceptions of grammar involved in all example generation tasks.
In this way, students will process all grammatical rules by themselves in a very
effective way, since it provides a ‘window’ into a learner’s mind.
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